Friday, April 20, 2012

Chat: Love and War

John:
Paul Cornell’s back...and this time, it’s personal! I know you thought
this was a bit of a sophomore slump for Cornell, but I actually thought
it was a bit better as a novel. Not as much fun as ‘Revelation’,
perhaps, but it’s kind of hard to write an upbeat novel about Ace and
the Doctor having a falling-out over his callous treatment of her fiance
and his gruesome, untimely death.Dee:
I wouldn’t say “Revelation” was fun, so much... people getting heads
cut off, a crucified Doctor, and so forth. But I felt like it hung
together better in some ways. And this one wasn’t bad, at all. One thing
that I thought was interesting was the way at the end, the TARDIS took
away Ace’s ability to understand languages before she’d even really
left... a bit final, that.John:
It’s one of the things that happens in a more “mature” version of the
series, I think. They tend to explore some of the logical consequences
of things that were just lampshaded in the old series. You can see how
the books influenced the new series in that sense; the scene where Rose
suddenly begins understanding the Sycorax is a distant descendant of
this book. But to get back to your more general thrust, “final” is
really a good word for this whole book. It’s all about the way things
end, and at the time, you could be forgiven for thinking that Ace was
gone for good. (That’s not spoilers, right?)Dee:
The worst of it was that she’d be right. The Doctor was more of a Right
Bastard to her than he’d been to anyone in hundreds of years. Ace was
perfectly entitled to be pissed at him. And “forgive me” only works so
many times. He’d pretty much used his up. Seven might have big soulful
eyes, but actions speak so much louder than those.John:
But you know, no matter how many times I read this one, I’m still never
sure whether the Doctor planned all along for Jan to be on that ship at
that time, or whether that was his backup backup backup backup plan and
everything he did leading up to that was an attempt to save everyone
including Jan...and it just failed. He definitely knew from the
beginning what was going on, as soon as he sniffed the soil and saw Jan.
Everything after that...the Doctor is a very opaque figure in this
novel. This is Ace’s book.Dee:
To me the theme of this novel is trust, and how when it’s not given
everything falls apart. The lack of trust between Roisa and Jan, Roisa
and Maire until the last second, Jan and most everyone, the Doctor and
Ace... and the places where things work, it’s because of trust: Jan and
Christopher, the military guy and the Doctor, Ace and Benny.John:
But it’s important, I think, to note that it’s not as simple as just,
“If you trust people, everything will all work out great!” The Hoothi
really do have spies and eyes everywhere, and the Doctor plays it close
to the vest because he has to. Some of the saddest parts of the novel, I
think, are the ways that Roisa winds up betraying the people she loves
so much, all through no fault of her own. The scene where the priest
asks her if she has a hole in her shoe is utterly chilling and
note-perfectly ominous.Dee:
No argument there, except that had she trusted them earlier it wouldn’t
have been so bad. I agree with you that it’s perfectly executed, don’t
get me wrong. I just think there’s a lot of meditating on trust in it.
And in the end, it was Julian and Jan’s trust in Ace that ended the
menace, despite them being controlled and even killed.John:
And in a way, Jan’s trust in the Doctor. I think that Jan is the only
one who trusts completely in this novel; even though he doesn’t
consciously go along with the Doctor’s plan, he does let the Doctor know
that he’s willing to do anything to save his friends, and in the end,
he does what the Doctor asks of him with all that’s left of him. He’s
kind of a twit at times, and a bit clueless and inept with his
interpersonal skills, but you have to give him that. (Or did you not
think he was a bit of a clueless twit?)Dee:
A bit? Very. I thought the “Ace Goes For The Bad Boy” thing was a bit
too pat. She didn’t thwap him upside the head (metaphorically) enough.
But he did have the strength to keep up with her, and in ten years he
might have been quite a decent guy.John:
Oh, yes. Tremendously immature, no question. Which plays, I think, into
the reason that he couldn’t make a poly couple work very well. His
motivations for being with Roisa were not good ones, he couldn’t let go
of her and he couldn’t be what she wanted him to be, which was more
committed (I never got the feeling that she wanted him to be exclusive
to her, only that she wanted him to be her husband...) He hurt her a lot
by trying not to hurt her too much. Even though it was a portrait of a
poly relationship that wasn’t working, I thought it was a poly
relationship that wasn’t working for real reasons, not just because
“poly relationships never work”.Dee:
I’d agree with you if we’d seen one that worked. I get the feeling that
Cornell thinks they don’t, but well-meaning people can try to make them
work. Call it a hunch, we’ll see if it plays out at all in future
books. But yes, he did give it real reasons, which is refreshing. I’m
still having a hard time fitting this Ace into the Ace from a few books
back. I don’t see how you can deescalate from warrior with gunsights to
the calmer Ace here.John:
I think you’re right. I think they actually made the break here the way
they did because the direction they wanted to take the character
couldn’t really work as a gradual transition; it was like the ghost of
the character we saw on TV kept hovering over the Ace of the books,
constantly dragging her back to fit into that mold. By taking her off
the scene for a while, and then bringing her back as almost a new
character with a new character bible, the editors stopped people from
writing her like it was still Season 25. I think this is really the
major transition point for the series, where they finally leave the TV
show behind completely, and leaving behind the TV version of Ace is a
big part of that.As
is introducing Benny. It’s funny, but as much as Cornell puts into
showing you the character in this one, I don’t think she really does
much here. She basically spends the whole book waiting to step into the
TARDIS, only occasionally contributing to the plot. (I liked your idea
of Maire on the TARDIS, though. But given the way the Doctor acted,
she’d never have gone with him.)Dee: I’m not quite sure why Benny did, given how she backed up Ace. John:
I think the opportunity of traveling through all time and space,
combined with the not-quite-buried thought that she could find out what
really happened to her father, was just too much to resist no matter how
badly she thought of the Doctor. (Hmm, and years later we’d get
“Father’s Day” from the same author...have I mentioned lately that the
new series drew heavily on these books?)Anyhow,
next time we’ll get another plot that Benny is involved in both very
much and almost not at all, but in an entirely different way...

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What We're All About

I'm John Seavey, and my personal favorite era of Doctor Who was the Wilderness Years. The series might have been off the air, but it never felt more alive and exciting, creatively. I firmly believe that the series as we see it on the BBC today isn't so much a continuation of the old TV series as it is an outgrowth of the amazing work done by the authors on the books (and later the audios, which were heavily influenced by the books themselves.)

When I said as much to my wife Dee, a big fan of the new series with somewhat limited experience of the books, she decided that she wanted to explore this era with me. So together, we're reading all the way from the roots of the literary era of Doctor Who up through the latest books by luminaries like Stephen Baxter and Michael Moorcock. Feel free to join us on our trip!

Next 5 Books

(Side Trip: The Shadow of the Scourge)
Decalog
Legacy
Theatre of War
All-Consuming Fire
Blood Harvest